Contact Info

ASTR8008 -- Star Formation

Semester 2, 2016

Class meeting times

Mondays and Wednesdays, 9:30 - 11:30 AM
Wooley Seminar Room

Syllabus

This course covers the basics of star formation and the
transition to planet formation. We begin with a survey of the
physical processes that govern star-forming clouds, including
magnetohydrodyanmic turbulence, gravitational instability,
non-ideal MHD effects, and radiative transfer by molecules and
dust grains. We then study the star formation process starting
at galactic scales and working our way down, touching on
topics including: star formation laws; molecular cloud
formation, evolution, and disruption; collapse, fragmentation,
and the origin of the initial mass function; protostellar
disks and outflows; pre-main sequence stellar evolution;
massive stars and feedback; and the dispersal of disks and the
onset of planet formation.

Reading

Our main reference for this class will be the book
Notes on Star Formation; you may find the source for the book on
github. N.B. A version of the book is available on
the arXiv. However,
this is not the most up to date version of the book, so please
use the link above or the github version, rather than the
arXiv version.